Ex-tabloid editor loses hacking fees legal fight

He challenged Morgan’s unsupported assertion Tuesday that a tabloid editor could only monitor about 5 percent of his journalists’ work, saying he often saw Morgan inspecting reporter’s computer screens or working late into the night to tweak headlines.

Morgan “stamped his authority on every single page,” Hipwell said. “The newspaper was built around the cult of Piers.”

Morgan, 46, has already dismissed Hipwell’s claims as the “unsubstantiated allegations of a liar and convicted criminal.” Trinity Mirror Group lawyer Desmond Browne made a similar argument, saying his newspaper group rejected Hipwell’s allegations.

However, testimony to the inquiry is given under oath, meaning speakers could be subject to criminal proceedings if found to have violated any British laws.

More than a dozen News of the World journalists have been arrested in the hacking scandal, senior executives with Murdoch's News Corp. media empire have lost their jobs, and top U.K. police officers have resigned over their failure to tackle the problem.

Authorities on Wednesday arrested their first serving police officer as part of an investigation into bribes paid to police by journalists seeking scoops.

London police said a 52-year-old woman, who has not been identified, was arrested on suspicion of corruption and misconduct in a public office. The woman was detained at a house in Essex, in southeastern England, and was being questioned.

Eight people, including a reporter working for The Sun tabloid, have so far been arrested as part of the police corruption inquiry, although no one has yet been charged.

Separately, a court ruled Wednesday that Murdoch's British newspaper company must keep paying the legal fees of a private investigator at the center of the scandal.

High Court justice Andrew Morritt said the News International subsidiary News Group Newspapers was bound by an agreement last year protecting Glenn Mulcaire from costs and damages arising from voicemail litigation in which they were joint defendants.

The company, itself a subsidiary of Murdoch's News Corp., had tried to end the contract after it emerged publicly that it was still guaranteeing the costs of a convicted criminal. Mulcaire was jailed briefly in 2007, along with News of the World royal correspondent Clive Goodman, for eavesdropping on the phone messages of royal aides.

Goodman and Mulcaire remain the only two people ever convicted over the practice.

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Associated Press writers Jill Lawless and David Stringer contributed to this report.